“If I owned Texas and Hell,
I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
~
General Philip Henry Sheridan
Season of sweat and sticky listlessness
blazing in a blast of blistering sun,
teasing timorous twangs of restlessness -
that banshee-screeching, shrill cicada song,
and goading hummingbirds to zip and vie
in emerald-armoured, fierce, zig-zagging war
for treasure from a syrup-seeping bloom,
while napes of freckled necks grow red and raw,
as buzzards surf the sizzle of the sky,
mosquitos wheel and whine in fever’s sigh,
and bees bob in a pollen-swollen swoon –
when will your sultry ways phase out and give
us mitten-fingered magic under skies
aglow with sleety sorcery to sieve
a sprinkling of relief to spare dazed lives?
That smoking brisket-burn and humid haze,
when teetering in a margarita fug,
is a reeling feeling borne from sweltering
fueled by forever sunscreen-straw-hat days,
when shawl-clad folk are relishing a glug
of lush, lip-licking cocoa in a mug –
why mock us with the sass of Summer’s grin?
Where is the chill of Winter’s cooling touch
to quell this spell of Hades here on earth?
This horrid, torrid swell just proves too much
to beat this hellish hearth when there’s a dearth
of frost to lace a lusting for the fresh
and dustless climes of alpine reverie:
a pristine blast of white that will extend
its kiss of ice-blessed splendor to fried flesh
in snow-capped, cheek-chapped, scarf-wrapped bonhomie,
beyond this flame-ordained infinity,
where Summers never, ever, EVER end!
Susan Jarvis Bryant
If you have any thoughts on this poem, Susan Jarvis Bryant
would be pleased to hear them.
